Croteam has announced that Jonas and Verena Kyratzes will be the screenwriters for Serous Sam 4! Jonas has worked with Croteam previously as a writer for The Talos Principle, while Verena is all-new to the world of Croteam. No news about the actual story yet, but Damjan Mravunac, Croteam's CMO, said that “it will be worth the wait!”.

I wrote this on Twitter, and I'll repeat it here too: this is the best thing that happened to the franchise to me. I don't worry that much about gameplay, graphics and music, as I'm sure that Croteam can do these things right, but the plotline bothered me for a long-long time. Being a fic-writer and spending hundreds of hours discussing the potential but imperfection of SS plotline with a couple of my friends and all the possible ways of managing the narrative design, these news finally give me a hope that this time, in hands of Jonas and his wife, the plotline will be as good and developed as the other elements of the game.

I just hope there'll be plenty of interesting lore now. I loved the big explanations of weapons, monsters and locations with the use of NETRICSA in Serious Sam: Classic.

__________________"Is there any better Gerüstbaufirmenvorarbeiterschlüsselanhängerfarbenwasserlöslichkeitskontrollchemiker than discy? No!" -Shrinker
[22:30] Fiendian: Discy, Finzy and Louva shall merge into a superentity known as the Lickyfonz.
"Can we just move Discy's posts to the HOF automatically already? :P" -Jetty

Unless you're playing co-op, you can open NETRICSA at any time and the game will pause until you exit. You could be fighting the biggest battle of your life and still open NETRICSA for a spot of lore if the mood strikes.

__________________"Is there any better Gerüstbaufirmenvorarbeiterschlüsselanhängerfarbenwasserlöslichkeitskontrollchemiker than discy? No!" -Shrinker
[22:30] Fiendian: Discy, Finzy and Louva shall merge into a superentity known as the Lickyfonz.
"Can we just move Discy's posts to the HOF automatically already? :P" -Jetty

I hope it doent mess up the pacing of the game.
Like, the the 'story' will be an excuse for corridor shooting, smaller maps, and cut scenes (ss3 cutscenes just killed the pacing of the game, imo)(and, even if ct said the maps were bigger, they sure didnt feel like it, at all). I would rather have little story, more action, bigger real maps, less cut scenes, and WAY less 'pauses' in the action, or much less frequency of the pauses.
Like, ss3, you go in 1 room and kill the enemies, then no action until you get to the next room.
There needs to be less of these situations, and more situations were the action lasts 10 minutes or more, THEN give a little breakwith cut scenes and story stuff, while we tissue our eyes from the tears that have been flowing from not blinking for 7 minutes.
THAT to me is a SS games, not pauses every 45 seconds like a darn cover based shooter.

SS is an interesting animal. The formula that originally worked is not the formula that has been used in any of the other games exactly, not even TSE. The problem is that what made TFE so great was its novelty, which no longer exists. So trying to replicate that first experience is probably impossible for anyone who played the original.

In general, what makes SS a good experience is that it gets the adrenaline going. How it does that is by presenting a literal wall of baddies flying at you and it kicks your fight or flight mechanism into overdrive. Unfortunately, there is a key balance point with that. You need enough baddies to get the effect, but not too many that the task is unbeatable for any but the most seasoned players. This makes the game impossible for first-timers and casual players who will give up if they can't overcome any challenge fairly easily (don't forget that the best part of the TFE experience was that it made you feel like a god).

With this in mind... making the maps larger doesn't actually help at all. It just adds more empty space that you shouldn't fill up for the above reasons. The other problem with deciding how large to make maps has to do with the co-op feature. Choosing a size that is equally as fun, engaging, and has the right amount of things to shoot at, for one person or for 16, is difficult to say the least. Granted you can code the engine to throw more things into the mix per extra player in the game, but Croteam didn't actually do that in any of the games (they did add options to make them harder to kill based on player count, though).

So now comes the big question: where does the story fit in? I think one major problem they will have to overcome with the story is how to make it work in co-op. I'm almost of the opinion that they shouldn't even try and that the story should be reserved for the SP campaign (it has never really worked well in any of the previous games in co-op). However, I would be very pleasantly surprised if they found a way to make it work. I also think that as an SP experience there could be a very meaningful story woven into the action that would bring much more life to the franchise and make the lone-wolf experience more satisfying.

But all of this is the fun of being a developer. Figuring out the challenges and finding solutions to them. Good luck guys!

In a way, it's like the latest Mad Max movie. It is one long car chase of awesome and explosions, but behind that lies a simple, but very well written story that moves that action forward. Without that story there, the movie wouldn't have that large of an impact.

While I do work for Croteam, I'm first of all of this community, so my opinions are my own and do not represent Croteam's views.Unless when I use this nice blue color I totally didn't steal from Blizzard.

I think the classics had enough story. You are sent back in time, you visit ancient civilizations and search for ancient artifacts to discover the locations of ancient alien spaceships which would lead you to an alien planet or something. Everything you need to know was explained in the Netricsa, without any cut scenes, character development and emotions.

I don't know what more do people need ? Just visiting and exploring those ancient places and searching for the artifacts had made me feel like I'm some kind of crazy Indiana Jones. From start to finish the classics were one big action adventure. I didn't have that feeling while playing SS3, I felt more like some marine with a bad sense of humor, fighting off an alien invasion. Jewel Of the Nile was better in that regard, since there were some artifacts involved, traps and puzzles.

Serious Sam was always considered by the majority of people as a mindless shooter without story. Of course this is not true actually, as the series has a very good and detailed lore, but if there's this bad stereotype that SS has no story, and even should not, I think it's a very bad sign. Series must evolve, and while the gameplay and basic structure/elements like enemies and weapons will always be the same and they don't need that much of an overhaul, the storyline is what needs to be improved as the weakest part of the game up to this moment. Good, developed, detailed story is not bad, it's actually very good, because story could add much more to the tone and quality of the game, just like gameplay/shooting itself. The game would only benefit from a better storyline production, raising up its reputation, breaking the stereotype of a 'stupid shooter without any story'. Actually, there's a lot of examples how more or less old-school games had a good script and benefit from it, like the newest Shadow Warrior reboot, which was kinda silly and simple at the beginning, but opened up and became very interesting, serious and even deep much closely to the end. Serious Sam 3 also tried to be more serious, but the story was not so original (falling from the helicopter: the game), and dialogs were boring and short, while all the new characters were very poorly developed, so you just didn't feel any simpathy or connection to them, even though they tried to be more or less important. If all those mistakes could be fixed in SS4, it will be only better, the game will be more memorable and interesting.
After all, we live in a modern world, industry developed, became older, as well as gamers, and I know (at least judging by our Russian community) that a lot of Serious Sam fans (myself included) really want some good story, both developed world and characters in Serious Sam. It's time to move on and grow up.
P.S. while I agree that endless, half an hour cut-scenes are certainly not a good idea for SS, there's still a lot of ways to present the story by clever narrative design, and by that I don't mean just using long walls of text in Netricsa.
P.P.S. I know that it may look funny and strange, but my biggest concern about the script and storytelling in SS4 is... Croteam itself. I'm afraid they'll ruin Jonas and Verena's efforts by removing a lot of cool stuff or making the story much more simple, downgrading some elements or saving money and time on cutting something really big and epic. After all, we all know about their love to cut cool stuff.

I can see howvbetter stories help some games, when they need to be refreshed, like tomb raider 2013 and wolfenstein, but I also think wolf went back to its roots, and thats why I liked it. Tomb raider always had cut scenes and a slower pace, so different and better story worked very well in that game. TR style story telling would turn me off ss4, but the wolf story telling and pace would be great.
I guess it depends on how CT impliment the story.
Even thiugh I am broke, I will still buy it, unless it incorperates puzzles. Cut scenes and crappy puzzles would kill the series for me. I believe I said that about 3, and it did ruin it for me, except the end levels returned more to the SS I love.

__________________"Is there any better Gerüstbaufirmenvorarbeiterschlüsselanhängerfarbenwasserlöslichkeitskontrollchemiker than discy? No!" -Shrinker
[22:30] Fiendian: Discy, Finzy and Louva shall merge into a superentity known as the Lickyfonz.
"Can we just move Discy's posts to the HOF automatically already? :P" -Jetty

Or maybe some deep and insightful parallels between gnaars and the human condition.

You see, gnaars have only one eye, which symbolizes humanity's tunnel vision in life. We focus on shallow material gratification and not higher expressions of spiritual fulfillment such as creating and sharing.

You mean like Valley of the Jaguar? "To be, or not to be? That is a serious question."

__________________"Is there any better Gerüstbaufirmenvorarbeiterschlüsselanhängerfarbenwasserlöslichkeitskontrollchemiker than discy? No!" -Shrinker
[22:30] Fiendian: Discy, Finzy and Louva shall merge into a superentity known as the Lickyfonz.
"Can we just move Discy's posts to the HOF automatically already? :P" -Jetty

__________________"Is there any better Gerüstbaufirmenvorarbeiterschlüsselanhängerfarbenwasserlöslichkeitskontrollchemiker than discy? No!" -Shrinker
[22:30] Fiendian: Discy, Finzy and Louva shall merge into a superentity known as the Lickyfonz.
"Can we just move Discy's posts to the HOF automatically already? :P" -Jetty

"Fair is Foul; and foul is fair" macbeth
'Look like the innocent flower, but be the serpent under ‘t." macbeth
"Though this be madness, yet there is method in 't." hamlet

anyways, I do agree that sam needs more creative, cheesy, and chuckle worthy one liners and a great, in depth story to go along with SS4. But make it simplistic and easy to understand and relate to so I don't have to read a wiki about the detailed lore about it. If they can pull off a great story without messing with the pacing with the game would be awesome.

Basically that, yeah. They should also up the ante of the creativity of the one-liners. There were some zingers in Sam3, but it didn't match up to the earlier games.

__________________"Is there any better Gerüstbaufirmenvorarbeiterschlüsselanhängerfarbenwasserlöslichkeitskontrollchemiker than discy? No!" -Shrinker
[22:30] Fiendian: Discy, Finzy and Louva shall merge into a superentity known as the Lickyfonz.
"Can we just move Discy's posts to the HOF automatically already? :P" -Jetty

While I do work for Croteam, I'm first of all of this community, so my opinions are my own and do not represent Croteam's views.Unless when I use this nice blue color I totally didn't steal from Blizzard.